In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, I, the inventor, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. I also grow a lesser number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits, usually to capture recessive traits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of peach tree, which has been denominated varietally as ‘SUGARPEACH III’.
During the spring of 1998 I gathered fruit from several different unnamed seedlings in my experimental orchard located near Le Grand, Calif., in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). One particular group of peaches was yellow in flesh color, clingstone in type, and sub-acid in flavor, and was thus designated as “YPCSA (OP)”. The seeds from this fruit were removed, cracked, stratified, germinated, and grown as seedlings on their own root in my greenhouse. Upon reaching dormancy that fall, I transplanted them to a cultivated area in the experimental orchard described above. During the fruit evaluation season of 2001 I selected the claimed variety as a single tree from the group of “YPCSA (OP)” described above. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of peach tree, I asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The present variety is most similar to ‘SPRING CANDY’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 14,677) peach by producing peaches that are firm in texture, yellow in flesh color, sub-acid in flavor, and mostly red in skin color, but is distinguished therefrom by blooming later, by requiring more chilling hours, and by producing fruit that is clingstone instead of freestone in type, that is sweeter in taste, and that matures about twelve days earlier.